


Faithful in Adversity

by sylviarachel



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Cancer, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friends to Lovers, John has nightmares, M/M, POV Sherlock Holmes, Post-Reichenbach, Sherlock has feelings, UST, tw: cancer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-22
Updated: 2013-10-22
Packaged: 2017-12-30 03:08:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1013368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylviarachel/pseuds/sylviarachel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is busy repressing his attraction to John when John receives devastating news about an old friend. To everyone's surprise -- especially Sherlock's -- Sherlock is faithful in adversity.</p><p>Translation to Chinese available here: http://221dnet.211.30i.cn/bbs/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=5952&extra=page%3D1</p>
            </blockquote>





	Faithful in Adversity

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [[授权翻译] Faithful in Adversity 患难与共](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12313929) by [KeepCalmAndPlayDumb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KeepCalmAndPlayDumb/pseuds/KeepCalmAndPlayDumb)



> Warning: this is a story in which one person dies and two other people get together as an indirect result. I'm really sorry about this. Honestly not advocating cancer or death of close friend as catalyst for romantic relationship. But I will say, having been through it myself, that a cancer diagnosis is a really way to find out who your real friends are.

“What are you doing?” Sherlock leans over John’s shoulder, not touching but so close that he could kiss John’s ear, if he--

“Emailing my sister,” John says, imperturbable. “Stop reading over my shoulder.”

Huffing in faux offence, Sherlock swoops away to fling himself on the sofa.

What would John do if Sherlock actually did kiss his ear? Would he laugh and keep typing? Think it was accidental? Pretend not to notice? Occasionally, Sherlock lets himself imagine John turning into his touch, imagine that all the things he wants, John wants, too. But mostly, when he hypothesizes the outcome of this sort of experiment, it all ends with John’s sharp inhale, recoil, rejection. With John striding out of the flat and, this time, never coming back.

And that mustn’t happen.

So kissing John’s ear is out of the question. Obviously.

Twenty minutes and thirty-six seconds later, John’s laptop pings (incoming email message). The typing stops: John is reading the new email.

“Oh,” John says, in a voice that isn’t his. “Oh, _shit_.”

Sherlock’s gaze snaps to John’s face. John’s face, which is grey and blank.

“John?”

John doesn’t answer. Doesn’t even seem to hear. Sherlock undrapes himself from the sofa and crosses the room to crouch beside John’s chair. He touches John’s right arm and says again, “John? John, what does the message say?”

John blinks at him, eyes gone huge and dark and shocky, and after twenty-three seconds, give or take, finally seems to realize who is speaking to him. The tip of his tongue darts out to moisten his lips: a prelude to speech. “Sherlock,” he says, still in someone else’s voice. It’s deeply disconcerting.

“John, the email you just read,” Sherlock dislikes repeating himself, but the circumstances clearly require it. “What does it say?”

He could, of course, simply read it for himself, but John dislikes such invasions of his privacy (which is why Sherlock normally reserves them for occasions when he is alone in the flat), so he will treat this option as a last resort.

John seems to be trying to say something, but failing. Sherlock’s hand tightens on his arm, an involuntary reaction: this is a side of John he doesn’t know, doesn’t like. Finally John’s left hand – which is trembling – gestures helplessly at his laptop screen, which Sherlock takes as permission to read.

 _John, mate_ , the message begins (fellow soldier, not fellow doctor), _I’m sorry to tell you this but Bill’s in hospital, Bill Murray. They reckon it’s terminal and I thought you’d want to know. Must have come on very sudden, I only saw him last month, though he did look like he wasn’t sleeping well, but there again a lot of guys don’t. Anyway, mate, it’s Kettering General Hospital in Kettering, the Centenary Wing, I came down yesterday but can’t stay long and I know he’d like to see you._

It isn’t signed, but the sender is _MacKenzie, Duncan_.

Sherlock can’t recall ever hearing that name, but he does recall Bill Murray: the Army medic who saved John’s life in Afghanistan. Married; lives in Northamptonshire.

 _The man who saved John’s life_ , he repeats. It’s clear what John’s response should be; equally clear that John is currently incapable of action.

Sherlock stands up; releases his too-tight grip on John’s arm. Hesitates. Rummages behind the sofa, extracts a forgotten blanket; shakes the dust out of it, and returns to drape it around John’s shoulders.

“I’m putting the kettle on,” he says then, suiting the action to the word, “and going up to your room to pack you a bag.” Pause; no reply. “All right, John? I’ll make you a cup of tea when I come back downstairs.”

He has used this tone of voice (it’s John’s bedside-manner-for-people-in-shock voice, down half an octave) before -- on crime victims and occasionally, when expedient, on suspects. It feels strange and wrong to use it on John.

Sherlock knows John’s wardrobe and bureau drawers as well as he knows his own, so it takes only three minutes and forty-nine seconds to pack what he hopes is an appropriate number of pants, vests, socks, shirts, jumpers and jeans into the hold-all gathering dust under John’s bed. On the way back to the kitchen he darts into the loo for toothbrush, toothpaste, and electric razor. The kettle is just on the boil; Sherlock drops a teabag into John’s RAMC mug, pours, and leaves it to steep while he’s packing his own bag.

While John is drinking his tea – the tea whose existence he completely failed to observe until Sherlock wrapped the fingers of his left hand around the mug’s handle, looked into his wide, dark eyes, and said firmly, “John. Drink your tea now” – Sherlock looks up trains to Kettering on his phone, books two tickets on the eleven-thirty train, explains the situation to Mrs Hudson (which takes forty-seven seconds) and persuades her not to fuss at John about it (which takes nearly five minutes). He looks up Kettering General Hospital and finds, not unexpectedly, that Centenary is its cancer care wing. By that time John has finished his tea and regained enough sentience to put on his own shoes and jacket and ask where they’re going.

“Kettering, John. Do keep up,” Sherlock says, but gently, and dares to put a hand on his shoulder to steer him out the door. 

* * *

 

By the end of the train journey (which takes sixty-two minutes, five more than advertised), John is looking more alive, his face less grey, his eyes less blank and vacant.

“Tell me about Bill,” Sherlock said, as the train pulled out of Luton. John turned to him with an almost ordinarily incredulous look: Sherlock never asks John about his old friends, has never shown the least interest. “Go on.”

John swallowed, rubbed the back of his neck. “We were stationed together in Helmand,” he said. “He’s career, combat medic, could have gone for medical officer but he liked being out in the field, and thank God for me he did, too. Big bloke – tall as you, but built like a rugby prop – good man to have with you, he’s strong and nothing fazes him and Christ, have you ever tried to lift a man in full kit and body armour when he’s unconscious? …”

The tap once opened, the words flowed out of him, all the way to Wellingborough and beyond, and now, as the train pulls into the station at Kettering, John looks almost like himself again. It’s hard for Sherlock to parse the magnitude of his relief.

More than that, though, he realizes he’s actually become interested in Bill Murray, who clearly is someone John doesn’t just like – John seems able to like most people, often for no reason Sherlock can divine -- but also respects and _trusts_. Bill, it occurs to Sherlock, has done the same thing for John that he and John have now done for each other several times, and saving someone’s life puts you in a special category, one Sherlock has no word for.

* * *

They go first to their hotel (unassuming bed-and-breakfast, just down the road from the hospital) to drop off their luggage; the proprietress predictably and needlessly apologizes for having given them a room with two singles instead of a double but John, unpredictably, doesn’t correct her, in fact doesn’t react to her in any way. No, not unpredictably, Sherlock corrects himself: John isn’t even listening.

She gives him a sympathetic look, and leans over the desk to murmur confidentially to Sherlock: “Visiting the hospital?”

Sherlock nods. John wanders vaguely away, and Sherlock adds, “Friend from his Army days. Cancer.”

The woman winces, and her gaze follows John, takes in his rounded shoulders and lowered head. “I’m so sorry, dear,” she says, low. “It’s good of you to come with him. My husband could never stand sick-visiting, always had to go on my own.”

The stress on the possessive pronoun makes it obvious what she’s assuming. He lets her. Not because she’s unconsciously enabling his wishful thinking, he tells himself, but because John’s got enough to deal with and it won’t help to make a scene.

“Come on, John,” he says instead, and carries both their bags to their room.

* * *

They take a disreputable-looking taxi to the hospital (more sympathetic glances at John from the cabbie) and inquire at the information desk, are given directions to the correct ward.

For the first time since reading Duncan MacKenzie’s email, Sherlock hesitates: “Do you … would you rather go up on your own?”

John looks up at him. He looks small, lost; lonely. “No,” he says. “No, I’d rather-- no.”

So they go up together in the gleaming lift, packed in with three nurses, a patient pushing an IV stand (has been outside for an illicit smoke), a radiologist, and two visitors clearly heading for the maternity unit (flowers, mylar balloons; excited chatter).

The lift decants them at the correct floor. John takes a deep breath; turns gently on one heel; spots the nursing station, and strides toward it, military-brisk. Sherlock has seen that gait before, striding away from his own grave. He follows, inexplicably short of breath.

Cancer is one of the worse fates Sherlock can think of, and he’s prepared for the Bill Murray he’s brought John to visit to be different, diminished, from the one John described in the train. What he failed to anticipate is the horrifying contrast between Murray’s physical appearance – thin, pale, exhausted; dark-circled eyes; bruises scattered from elbow to wrist – and the way his eyes light with enthusiasm when he sees John.

It’s sharp and painful, and Sherlock is surprised that John doesn’t physically flinch.

But John seems to have left his grief and shock behind him in the lift – or buried it deep, where not even Sherlock can get a good look at it. He’s calm, now, reassuring; not falsely, offensively cheerful, but demonstrably here to provide comfort, not to seek it, as people so often do when visiting the very ill.

They clasp hands, they talk quietly, and Sherlock hangs back, resolutely repressing a stream of deductions about Murray’s wife (surgical-- no, A&E nurse, grew up in Yorkshire, two cats (ginger and brown tabby), in her first trimester of pregnancy but hasn’t told her husband – because it’s not his? no: because she’s miscarried before and doesn’t want to get his hopes up) and the other patients he can see from where he’s standing. He tunes out their voices –eavesdropping on John’s private conversation with his dying friend: definitely Not Good – and it’s not until someone touches his elbow that he tunes back in and realizes John is speaking to him.

“You don’t have to stay, if you’re that bored,” John says, his voice even but his eyes, hurt.

“Not bored,” Sherlock says, although that’s not entirely true. He keeps his own hurt out of his voice, carefully: not John’s fault. “Trying not to eavesdrop.”

“Oh.” The surprise in John’s voice would be a bit offensive if he didn’t look so pleased, so _touched_. “Well. Thanks, then. Come along and meet Bill and Jeannie.”

Sherlock follows him, all docile compliance, to Bill’s bedside, is introduced, shakes hands firmly with Jeannie and carefully, minding the IV cannulae, with Bill. Bill has piercing blue eyes that squint a bit (as though he’s been squinting against bright sunlight all his life and can’t stop), and a lingering tan that makes his face look horribly sallow. “So,” he says. “You’re John’s bloke, then.” He looks Sherlock up and down. “The newspaper photos don’t do you justice.”

John makes a small, abortive sound of protest; glancing aside at him, Sherlock sees that he’s gone bright pink. It’s rather endearing – except that it’s evidence that the two of them do not want the same thing.

“It’s not like that,” John says, not very convincingly.

“John, mate,” says Bill Murray, with a wheezy chuckle, “you always were shite at telling lies.”

* * *

“I’m sorry about that,” John says, back in the lift an hour later. Remarkably, they have it all to themselves. “I didn’t expect--”

“It’s fine, John.”

“I mean, I have told them,” John insists. Sherlock begins to suspect he’s deflecting. “I haven’t been going around saying we’re--”

“John.” Sherlock puts his left hand on John’s left shoulder and swivels him around until they’re face to … well, face to neck. John looks up, automatically. “It’s fine. It’s all fine.”

John blinks.

“Look. It makes Bill happy to think you’re … well settled, yes? That you have someone, the way he does?”

“Yeah.” John produces a wan, wistful smile. “Yeah, I guess it does.”

“So,” Sherlock says. “What would be the good of taking that away from him?”

“That’s … that’s kind of you, Sherlock.” John blinks again, and quickly turns away – but not quickly enough to prevent Sherlock seeing, to his horror, that John’s eyes are filmed with tears.

The weight of it is so great that all the way back to the hotel, Sherlock tries his best to convince himself that Letting Bill Be Happy for John really was at the top of his priority list, instead of being third, behind Not Embarrassing John in Front of His Friends and (always there but seldom acknowledged) Wishing It Actually Were Like That.

He fails.

* * *

They eat a disappointing dinner in a forgettable restaurant near the hotel, talking about things that don’t particularly matter, and then walk back, slow and silent. In repose, John’s face is lined with grief and exhaustion. Sherlock wishes there were something he could do to make John happy again, but isn’t so stupid as to actually ask: he knows both that the answer is _No, Sherlock_ , and that the question itself is, in the circumstances, Not Good.

“How …” he begins, instead, as they climb the stairs to their room. “What’s the prognosis?”

John shrugs.

“But you did look at his chart, you spoke to the house officer. You do know--”

“I’m not an oncologist, Sherlock. And even if I were – it’s not an exact science, predicting how long someone’s got. The experts get that kind of call wrong all the time.”

“But …” It’s not a protest; it’s an invitation.

“But,” John repeats, looking defeated, “they think three months at the outside. They’ve recommended hospice care, which means they’re pretty sure aggressive treatment won’t buy him any significant time, and I think Bill and Jeannie will go with it. Aside from anything else, Jeannie works at Kettering and I’m sure she’d rather he not die there.”

Sherlock unlocks the door and puts on the light. John sits on the edge of the nearest bed and leans his elbows on his thighs, his head in his hands.

Sherlock crosses to the other bed, toes off his shoes, and stretches out on his back, looking at the damp patches on the ceiling.

“It’s just,” John says, finally, “cancer. Fucking _pancreatic cancer_ , Sherlock. Jesus, he’s only thirty-six.”

“You both could have died much younger in Afghanistan,” Sherlock ventures, when it appears John isn’t going to say anything else. “You nearly did.” He dislikes thinking about the fact that John nearly died when he was shot, not least because it leads to the (decidedly Not Good) corollary that had John not been shot at all, Sherlock would never have met him, which makes him, in an uncomfortable way, actually very grateful to the unknown sniper. (At least he knows better than to say _that_ out loud.)

“That’s-- yes,” John says, “but that’s completely different. You volunteer to go into a war zone, you know what you’re signing up for, and part of it’s that you might not make it back, yeah, but the other part is, if you _do_ make it back, you’re … I’m sorry, I don’t know how to explain this, Sherlock, it’s just … _wrong._ ”

“I understand,” says Sherlock, because if he had a choice between death by bullet wound and death by malignant metastasis, there’s no question in his mind which one he’d choose.

He feels John’s eyes on him, and turns his head.

“D’you know,” John says, shaking his head wonderingly, “I actually think you do.”

* * *

They stay in Kettering for four long days. John spends most of his waking hours with Bill; Sherlock wanders in and out, largely unremarked, and solves a case for Lestrade (abduction by non-custodial parent disguised as stereotypical stranger kidnapping) in the interstices of fetching dreadful hospital coffee and worse hospital sandwiches for John and for Jeannie Murray.

John thanks him over and over, sometimes in words and sometimes in silent, heartfelt glances from which Sherlock looks away, because he does not deserve them.

To his surprise, he finds himself liking Bill, and even Jeannie. They are straightforward people, which he appreciates; they are very fond of John, but they do not know him only as a short, unassuming blond man with an unfortunate taste in jumpers: Bill knows, respects and admires John as doctor, soldier and friend, as Sherlock does, and this creates a kind of unspoken kinship between them.

One morning, while John and Jeannie are talking to the house officer, Bill tells Sherlock how John earned his Conspicuous Gallantry Cross, which Sherlock (of course) has seen – tucked in at the back of the bureau drawer in which John keeps his socks and pants, in a box with his ID tags and military-issue ID card – but John has never mentioned. In return, Sherlock (after swearing him to secrecy) tells him who really shot the serial-killing cabbie.

When John comes back, they are grinning at each other, and his eyes widen in something like shock.

* * *

“You’ll ring me,” John says to Jeannie Murray for at least the fifth time, “if you need anything? Or if anything changes, or--”

“John.” She smiles at him, on the edge of tearful. “I’ll ring you. Thank you for coming, both of you--” the smile is for Sherlock, too, apparently-- “it’s meant a lot to Bill. To both of us.”

“It was nothing,” John says, and Sherlock adds, “We’re only an hour away by train. If you’d like us to come back, you’ve just got to say.”

The look John gives him then, as though he’s the best friend anyone’s ever had, makes him so ashamed of himself (specifically, of the hours he spent last night watching John sleep and restraining himself from slipping into bed beside him) that he goes away to look for a taxi.

He doesn’t get far enough, however, to avoid hearing what Jeannie says next: “He’s lovely, John. We’re so happy for you.”

And John says, “D’you know, he really is.”

* * *

“Sherlock.”

Sherlock, staring out of the window at the landscape flashing past, comes out of his thoughts with a start at the sound of John’s voice. “Hmm?”

“I just. I wanted …” John rubs the back of his neck. “Thank you, Sherlock. For … all of this. It’s … I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”

Sherlock, acutely uncomfortable, shrugs. “You clearly needed to go, and you were in no condition to make the arrangements yourself. The solution was obvious.”

“Yeah, I suppose so.” John produces a smile that’s half wry, half wistful. “Still, though. Thanks.”

* * *

When they arrive back in Baker Street, Mrs Hudson is waiting to fuss over John and make them both tea and biscuits. Sherlock lets her fuss for precisely ten minutes and thirty seconds and then, as gently as he can, steers her out of flat B and down the stairs.

“Oh, Sherlock,” she says, out of earshot of John mechanically sipping tea in his armchair, “you’ll take good care of him, won’t you?”

“Of course, Mrs Hudson.” He kisses her cheek and closes the door of flat A firmly behind her.

Then he climbs the stairs again and spends sixty-seven seconds resisting the urge to stroke John’s hair and kiss the top of his head.

* * *

Sherlock wouldn’t expect John to display his grief in public – he’s a soldier, he’s a medical professional, he’s _John_ – and indeed he hasn’t, and doesn’t. But when the sound of smashing crockery wakes him at half three in the morning, he pads barefoot-quiet into the kitchen to find John, also barefoot and pyjama-clad, leaning both fists on the worktop and trying, with indifferent success, to choke back sobs. The mug of tea he dropped has made an almost perfectly symmetrical splash pattern on the tile.

Without thinking about it at all, Sherlock stops directly behind him, puts his right hand on John’s right shoulder (the safe one, the one he can squeeze without causing discomfort), and squeezes gently. “John,” he says, because he can’t think what else he could possibly say.

John’s convex-curved back stiffens momentarily. Then, with a sound that is groan and sigh and sob all together, he turns right round, into Sherlock’s arms, and abruptly stops trying not to weep.

* * *

Sherlock has seen John cry before: brief, suppressed tears seen from a distance, masked by John’s hands over his face. This, John’s choking, abandoned sobbing in his arms, could not be more different, and Sherlock finds he’s unable to feel anything but grateful that this time he can be here, can do this.

He has no idea what to do, what to say – in all his adult life, no one has done this for him -- so he extrapolates, imagines John on the roof of Bart’s with him instead of down in the street, and holds tight, laying his cheek on the top of John’s head and murmuring nonsense: “Shh, it’s all right, I’ve got you.”

John’s arms go round his ribcage and cling.

There is nothing even remotely sexual about this embrace, and Sherlock isn’t even tempted to try to take it in that direction. But he knows that what he’s really saying is, _John, I love you._

* * *

When John’s weeping finally hiccoughs to a stop, Sherlock realizes to his astonishment that he has no idea how long they’ve been standing here; he’s actually lost track of time, as he so often does when working on a really interesting case. This is a fascinating piece of data, it feels important, but he files it away for later consideration because John is snuffling and dragging one sleeve across his eyes and starting to apologize, and Sherlock needs to focus on that.

“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t apologize.”

“Sherlock—”

“No.” The syllable emerges sharper and harsher than he intended; he closes his eyes and tries again: “Let me do this for you, John. Please.”

John looks up at him, eyes red-rimmed in his swollen face, and studies his expression. Whatever he sees there – and Sherlock honestly has no idea what he’s projecting at this fraught moment – seems to reassure him, because he drops his forehead against the damp patch on Sherlock’s shoulder and breathes.

Eventually John takes a single long, deep breath and pulls away. “Tea?” he says.

“Yes,” says Sherlock.

Then they both reach for the kettle, and their fingers clash, and they laugh, shaky and familiar-strange.

“Let me,” John says, and Sherlock understands from his tone that he’s asserting a return to normalcy, that he needs this, that for Sherlock to make tea for John, at this particular moment, would tip things over into some kind of imbalance.

* * *

They sit in front of the fireplace with their mugs of tea, not talking.

“I’ve got work tomorrow,” John says, eventually. “I mean, today. Back to real life.”

“John,” Sherlock begins, and then stalls: he’s not good at this, has no idea how to say what he’s thinking ( _feeling_ ), but can’t bear to not try. “That thing I said once, that there are no heroes. I was wrong.”

John rewards this last bit with a small, but genuine, surprised smile. “Oh?”

“Bill told me about your medal,” Sherlock says, baldly, staring into his tea. “So now I know there’s at least one hero in London.”

He glances up. John’s blushing, ducking his head. “Bill would,” he says. “As if he hadn’t got two medals of his own.”

“Would you tell me about them?” Sherlock asks, tentative.

And John does.

* * *

At eight forty-seven John leaves for his shift and Sherlock, relieved for the moment of the necessity to do anything for John, flings himself on the sofa to think.

At eight forty-nine he bounces up again and goes looking for his phone.

At eight fifty-one he sends a text to Lestrade: _Back in London. Anything for me? SH_

Lestrade replies almost immediately, but his response is _how's john?_

Sherlock thinks for almost five minutes about how to answer this. Finally he types, _Not sure. Has gone to work. Did not sleep well last night. SH_

Again the reply is instantaneous: _sorry to hear that. hell of a thing to happen. anything i can do?_

 _Not sure_ , Sherlock replies: he hates repeating himself, but it’s true. _Case? Cold case, even? Might provide a helpful distraction. SH_

And then (because he is altogether at sea now that there is nothing useful and practical for him to do, and the person whose advice he would normally ask in such a situation is, of course, John), _He is extremely distressed. I have no idea what to do. SH_

This time, it takes six minutes and twelve seconds for Lestrade to reply. When he does, the text is very short: _just be kind to him, sherlock._

“I want to be,” Sherlock says, very quietly, to the empty flat. “But I don’t know how.”

* * *

It occurs to him that John will be hungry when he gets home from work, and he times a delivery of John’s favourite Afghani takeaway to coincide with his estimated arrival. John is later than expected, and the food is lukewarm, but the delay has given Sherlock time to clear his microscope, titration rig, and mould index off the kitchen table and set it with clean dishes, cutlery and glasses (not wine, not candles: things are Not Like That, and anyway John will be tired and sad).

And John is tired and sad, but he smiles at the takeaway and the table, and thanks Sherlock and tells him it’s lovely and just what he needed. His voice is slightly husky – he’s been talking all day – and his tone slightly surprised.

“What have you been up to all day?” he asks, lifting a forkful of lamb to his lips. “Pestering Lestrade for a case?”

Sherlock frowns at him. “How did you know?”

“I guessed. Did he have any?”

“No.”

“Oh. Well. Maybe tomorrow.”

Sherlock asks about John’s day, and while John is talking he eats, because he knows John worries when he doesn’t, and it seems to him that maybe this is a way he can be kind to John.

* * *

At ten thirty-eight John yawns hugely, says, “G’night, Sherlock,” and goes upstairs to bed.

At one fifty-three Sherlock, sitting in his armchair with John’s latest issue of the _European Journal of Trauma and Emergency Surgery_ open in his lap, hears a ragged, wordless shout from the upstairs bedroom and, again without letting himself think about what he’s doing, caroms out of the sitting room and up the staircase to John’s door, where conscious thought overtakes him again and he stands for twenty-seven seconds with his hand on the doorknob, listening to John’s rapid, panicked breathing and vocalizations that are inflected like but not recognizable as English words.

Then he opens the door and goes in.

John has managed to wrap himself, all but one arm, in a straitjacket of bedclothes from which he is frantically trying, and failing, to break free. His sleeping face wears a frown of intense concentration; his hair is damp with sweat.

“John.” Sherlock lays a hand on John’s right shoulder. “John, wake--”

He leaps back just in time to avoid a wildly flailing left arm. Grabs it by the wrist; hangs on grimly. “John! Wake up! It’s not real, you’re dreaming!”

John shouts something that, while not actually intelligible to Sherlock’s ear, strongly and clearly recalls conversations overheard while ordering Afghani takeaway. Then he bolts upright, still tangled in the bedclothes, tears his wrist out of Sherlock’s frantic grip and screams, “Bill! _Bill!_ ”

Sherlock clambers up behind John and wraps both arms around John’s arms and torso, ducking his head out of the way of John’s. “John. It’s all right. Wake up. You’re safe, you’re in London. Wake up, John.” He doesn’t add _Bill’s fine_ , because since coming back to life (so to speak) he’s been trying very hard never to lie to John. But he does add, a little desperately, “Please.”

John wakes with a startled huff, breathing hard. He struggles for ten very long seconds; then he stops, abruptly, and Sherlock lets him go and scrambles off the bed, awkward and abashed now that the crisis is past.

“Oh my god,” John says, rubbing his face with the palms of both hands. “Oh my god. What the fuck, Sherlock?”

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Sherlock says. “You were in Afghanistan, I’m fairly certain.”

He reproduces John’s string of syllables; John stares at him, dumbfounded, and at last says, “That’s Pashto for ‘We are medical personnel.’ Jesus. What did I-- Oh, my god.”

John pulls his knees up to his chest, wraps his arms around them and puts his head down. “I can’t fight this,” he says. His voice is muffled; his shoulders shake. “I can’t shoot it, I can’t negotiate with it, I can’t even fucking heal it. I can’t fix it, I _hate_ that I can’t fix it, I—”

This time, when Sherlock’s arms go round John’s heaving shoulders, it doesn’t take even a moment for the tears to break free.

* * *

John goes up to Kettering twice more, and Sherlock goes with him once, before the end comes: three weeks, not three months. Jeannie Murray phones John to tell him, but then she phones Sherlock because John hasn’t picked up and this isn’t the sort of news you want to leave in a voicemail message.

“I’m so sorry,” Sherlock tells her; “Bill was a good man, and I feel lucky to have met him,” and there’s no need to choose his words or calculate how his voice should sound, because he is sorry and he does feel lucky and he means every word he’s saying.

He suggests the most likely times to reach John by phone.

“I wanted to ask if he’d speak at the service,” Jeannie says. “D’you think …?”

“I’m certain he would consider it a privilege,” Sherlock says, without hesitation.

After they ring off, he climbs the stairs to John’s room and shamelessly digs through the thinly stocked wardrobe for the dusty garment bag that holds John’s parade uniform.

* * *

John’s phone rings as he’s opening the door of the flat. Sherlock looks up at the sound, sees John dig his phone out of his jacket pocket, glance at the display. The ringtone sounds again. John meets Sherlock’s eyes; a look of bleak despair crosses his face, there and gone in an instant. He thumbs the phone’s screen, lifts it to his ear. “Jeannie,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”

* * *

“You were in my bedroom,” John says, as he comes down the stairs and into the kitchen. “Looking through my wardrobe.”

“I thought you would want—” He stops talking as John opens his mouth to retort (he can imagine the words: _Boundaries, Sherlock!_ or _Jesus, what’s next, rooting through my bureau drawers?_ ); but then John’s mouth closes again, into a sad, defeated line, and what he says is, “D’you know what? Never mind. You were being helpful. It’s fine.”

He trudges through the kitchen; sags into his chair. “Jeannie asked me to speak at Bill’s service,” he says. “I said I’d do it. Why did I say that?”

“Because you were friends,” Sherlock says. It feels strange to be on this end of this conversation, saying the kind of thing that John has so often said to him.

“What the hell am I going to say?”

“What you said to me in the train to Kettering,” Sherlock says; this is an easy question to answer. “And the night after we came back the first time.”

John quirks an eyebrow at him.

“Only … maybe without all the barracks language.”

* * *

It can take some time to arrange a military funeral, John explains. Sherlock looks at him (painstakingly typing up his eulogy and drinking his fourth cup of coffee because he’s still sleeping badly), and grits his teeth, and phones Mycroft.

Two days later they’re on a train to Kettering again.

* * *

The church is packed by the time they arrive, despite their being half an hour early. A (surely teenaged?) boy in a uniform like John’s, with the same pins on his collar and almost the same badge on his cap, greets them at the sanctuary door; he salutes John smartly, with a respectful eye on the medal ribbon Sherlock bullied him into wearing, and says, “This way, Captain Watson, sir.”

Sherlock tries to hang back, but John’s hand reaches blindly back to clutch the sleeve of his coat, so he doesn’t press the point.

John is dry-eyed, almost frighteningly composed. He delivers his eulogy with quiet intensity, salutes Bill’s casket and pauses to hug Jeannie and clasp hands with Bill’s father before returning to his seat in the second pew.

“You were brilliant,” Sherlock whispers, as John slides in beside him. “Bill would have been proud.”

Sherlock has never been much for church services, and military ones still less, but even he has to admire the officiant’s handling of the circumstances: she doesn’t pretend Bill’s death at thirty-six, in the midst of a valuable career, is anything other than tragic, but keeps the focus on his life, not his death. Jeannie is red-eyed but stoic; Bill’s father weeps quietly throughout the service.

Sherlock hovers behind John, trying not to be in the way but reluctant to go too far, since John seems inexplicably comforted by his presence. It’s obvious the assumptions everyone is making, but if anyone is inclined to take exception to John’s choice of plus-one, they at least have the good taste not to do so out loud – even, somewhat to Sherlock’s surprise, once the drinking starts.

* * *

On the train back to London, John says nothing at all for forty-six minutes. Then, abruptly, furiously, he says, “I keep thinking he’ll turn out not to be dead after all.”

Sherlock looks at him. To someone else, that comment might read as just part of the denial phase of grieving, but Sherlock knows exactly what John means. He can’t think of anything to say.

* * *

Two weeks later, while John is at work, Sherlock opens the fridge to retrieve another frog liver and notices that there is less than a quarter-inch left at the bottom of the milk bottle. He notices it again when he puts away the frog livers an hour later.

Then he puts his coat on over his pyjamas, puts on his shoes and goes out to buy a bottle of milk.

* * *

“Sherlock,” John says, when he opens the fridge that evening after dinner, to put away the remains of their kebab and rice, and sees the new bottle of milk, “you’re not still apologizing, are you?”

“What?” Sherlock lifts bow from strings and frowns at John.

“Because you don’t have to. I mean, I’m not saying you shouldn’t have let me help you, and I’m not saying I wasn’t hurt and angry, but … Look, you’re forgiven, Sherlock, okay? I accept that you honestly thought it was the best solution, and I respect your motivations. You don’t have to—”

“I’m not apologizing,” Sherlock says. “This has nothing to do with … that.” He should leave it there, but he goes on, reckless, sounding defensive because he feels so guilty: “Why do people always assume an ulterior motive? Even _you_?Why is it so difficult to accept that I might simply be _trying to help_?”

John looks taken aback. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry. It’s just that … well.”

“What?” Sherlock demands, frowning at him.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” John says, in the tone that means he knows Sherlock is going to do exactly that, “but you very often do have an ulterior motive.”

“For God’s sake, John, this isn’t about the _coffee_?”

John, for the first time in a very long time, laughs. (The sound is not as welcome as Sherlock might have predicted; in fact, it makes his chest hurt.) “No, Sherlock,” he says. “It’s not about the coffee. It’s about … all the many, many situations that are similar to the coffee. It’s about the fact that the thing with the coffee is sort of your M.O.”

He rubs the back of his neck; Sherlock wonders (not for the first time) what it would feel like to rub his own palm over the fine short hairs that taper down towards John’s shirt-collar, and is so absorbed in wondering that he almost misses what John is saying now: “… and I’m really, incredibly grateful for how supportive and-- and _great_ you’ve been, I honestly am, Sherlock, but it’s also beginning to weird me out just a little bit.”

Sherlock stares at him open-mouthed, incensed and appalled that John so fundamentally _doesn’t understand_ , and forgetting for the moment that he’s been trying his best to conceal his motivations precisely in order to prevent John from understanding.

By the time he remembers, he’s already halfway through an outraged defensive rant.

“… and I have been eating breakfast and dinner _every day_ so that you wouldn’t worry, I have done the washing-up, I have played Chopin for you even though Chopin is sentimental and _boring_ , I have helped you disinfect the fridge, I have let you wear that _ridiculous_ cardigan thing even though it makes you look like a hobbit, I have _never once_ kissed your ear when you are typing your blog, no matter how much I wanted to, because—”

Sherlock’s mouth snaps shut in abject horror as his brain belatedly registers what his ( _stupid, stupid, treacherous, idiotic_ ) mouth has just said.

John is staring at him. “Why?” he asks evenly.

“Why did I let you wear the hobbit cardigan?” He already knows it won’t work: it’s obvious, of course, what John is really asking. “Because—”

“Idiot,” says John. “Though, really? You’ve not deleted Tolkien? No: why haven’t you ever kissed my ear, if you want to so much?”

This was not what Sherlock was expecting. “Because— because it would— ruin it. Ruin everything,” he says. “You … don’t want the things I want, you’ve made that perfectly clear, and it’s much better to have … this” (he waves his bow vaguely around at the cluttered sitting-room) “than nothing.”

“Sherlock.” This tone of voice is new: it’s the Captain Watson voice John deploys when he’s tired of arguing, but with something else in it that Sherlock doesn’t recognize, something that curls his toes. “Come here.”

“Why?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute. Just put down your violin and come here.” There’s a sound of keys clicking – no, the same key depressed several times in succession.

Reluctant, suspicious, Sherlock puts the violin in its case, loosens the threads on the bow and lays it across the music-stand, crosses the room to stand at John’s elbow.

“Now,” John says. “Let’s do an experiment.” He rests his fingers on the keyboard of his laptop, turns his face to the screen. “Here I am, typing a blog entry. There’s my ear.”

Sherlock, without quite intending to, finds himself leaning over John’s shoulder, exactly as he has done so many times before. He looks at the screen, which is indeed showing the draft of a blog entry. It’s titled “In Memory of a Hero,” and the first two paragraphs are recognizably adapted from John’s speech at Bill Murray’s funeral; but below them there’s an inch of blank space, and below that a new paragraph is slowly coming into existence. When Sherlock leans down to look, it reads,

_Sherlock, go ahead and_

As Sherlock watches, fascinated, John types,

_see what happens._

Sherlock’s heart abruptly seems too large for his ribcage; for a moment he is genuinely afraid he will pass out, and grips the back of John’s chair so hard that his fingers cramp. Then, holding his breath, he turns his head very slightly and closes the small gap to press his lips to the pink curve of John’s right ear.

John’s head turns: towards him, not away.

John says, “Sherlock,” in a voice that Sherlock has _definitely_ never heard before.

John’s eyes are very wide, a little red and very, very blue, and John’s left hand is reaching up to tangle in Sherlock’s hair, and John’s lips are on his, and this is just. Not. Possible.

But, oh, _so much better_ than he’s ever dared to imagine.

* * *

“Sherlock, you have to _tell_ me these things,” John says, an unguessable time later. “What were you planning to do – just pine away Byronically forever, and never tell me what was really going on?”

“You weren’t interested,” Sherlock says. He means it to sound accusing, but it doesn’t come out that way, because he is curled on the sofa with John’s head tucked into the curve of his neck and John’s arms around his ribcage and John’s legs all tangled up with his, and the most he can manage is a sort of reproachful mumble. “You kept telling people it wasn’t like that. _I’m not his date_. _We’re not a couple_. _I’m not actually gay_. You had all those girlfriends. Honestly, John, I’m not the only one who hasn’t been completely forthcoming about … whatever this is.”

John’s breath hitches, so slightly that it would be imperceptible if he weren’t currently breathing just millimetres from Sherlock’s skin. “You’re right,” he says. “You’re completely right, and I’m sorry. I … I think I was waiting for you to observe it, deduce it, because you’ve always been able to deduce everything about me, and that … wasn’t fair. I should’ve said something, I should’ve been honest about how I felt. How I _feel_. But, Sherlock …”

His voice trails off.

“But?” Sherlock prompts him, when it’s become clear that John is not going to finish that sentence on his own.

“But,” says John, low, “you aren’t the only one who’s been afraid of ruining things.”

Sherlock wriggles around until he can reach John’s mouth with his again, and kisses him until neither of them can breathe very well.

He won’t let himself think about long-term consequences, not yet. But just at this moment, anything seems possible.

* * *

Things are not ruined.

John is not the energetic and enthusiastic pursuer of Sherlock's more adventurous (and guiltier) fantasies, and he gets a lot of phone calls from Jeannie Murray, but the first thing he does every time he gets home from work is to find Sherlock, wherever he is in the flat, kiss him tenderly and hug him tightly for several minutes. Sherlock therefore feels justified in concluding that John is at least not having second thoughts about kissing him.

Six weeks after Bill's funeral service, John rings off after speaking to Jeannie and gives Sherlock a small, slightly dazed smile. "Jeannie's twenty weeks pregnant," he says. "She's not told anyone until now because she's miscarried twice before. She wanted me -- us -- to be first to know, after her family."

Then, registering Sherlock's lack of astonishment, he says, "You already knew, didn't you, you secretive wanker. Why didn't you tell me?"

"Not my business," Sherlock says, with a one-shouldered shrug. And then (more truthfully), looking at his shoes, "I didn't want to hurt your feelings by making them uncomfortable. And then, later, I didn't want to hurt _their_ feelings by making them uncomfortable."

"Sherlock Holmes," John says, in a thick sort of voice, "I think I love you."

* * *

“So,” John says, pausing in the act of unbuttoning Sherlock's shirt, “er … have you, ever?”

“Yes,” says Sherlock, instantly and dismissively. This is the closest they have got so far to getting each other's clothes off, and he feels he's been sufficiently patient.

John narrows his eyes, suspicious: “Wait. Was it for a _case_?”

“Well, yes. Obviously.”

“‘Obviously’?” John’s grey-gold eyebrows (up close, they are half a dozen different colours: fascinating) fly up nearly to his hairline. “Sorry, no, that statement _cries out_ for an explanation.”

Sherlock huffs and rolls his eyes, telegraphing annoyance that’s only partly real (the other part is common or garden awkwardness). “Sex is part of the human experience. For most people. Understanding certain … elements of that experience was necessary to my analysis of the suspect pool.”

A small vertical crease appears between John’s eyebrows. “I … don’t know if I actually want to know,” he says. “I mean … unless you want to tell me.”

“Not particularly. It was all extremely boring.”

“So you’ve never just … done any of this stuff for the fun of it.”

Sherlock shrugs, awkwardly, one-shouldered. “I was never particularly interested.”

“I never thought you were. You seem pretty interested today, though,” John notes. Head on one side: fondly mocking.

“It’s completely different when it’s _you_ ,” Sherlock tells him. “Obviously.”

“I was hoping you’d say that,” John says.

He smiles, a real, honest, something-has-made-me-happy smile, and seeing that expression on John’s face again, after what seems like half a lifetime, makes Sherlock’s heart feel too big for his ribcage once more. He wonders what the physiological analogue of that feeling is, and whether John can explain it to him.

Later.

**Author's Note:**

> "Faithful in Adversity" is the English for _In Arduis Fidelis_ , the motto of the Royal Army Medical Corps.
> 
> Apologies for undoubted inaccuracies in the details of military medical care, uniforms, and funeral customs in the UK. If you know more about this than I do and spot errors, please do point them out so I can fix them.


End file.
